Welfare States and Imprisonment Rates: Revisiting Public Assistance and Punishment in the United States

• In Event: Downsizing Punishment: Institutional Closure and the Future of Incarceration

Abstract

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical connections between welfare and punishment using annual data from all fifty states from 1980 to 2019. A long line of social science scholarship emphasizes that these two major social institutions—the welfare state and the carceral state—must be considered as complementary and alternative methods of managing marginalized groups. Quantitative research often confirms these claims, finding a durable inverse relationship between welfare generosity and imprisonment rates. However, measurement inconsistencies, methodological concerns (e.g., nonstationarity), limited time series, and a lack of clarity about mechanisms may limit the relevance of this research. In this study, I improve on and update this literature by 1) comparing the predictive ability of several competing operationalizations of welfare generosity, giving specific attention to their congruence with existing theoretical accounts; 2) accounting for the time series properties of the data; 3) extending the period of observation to include the recent decline in imprisonment rates; and 4) exploring whether crime mediates the often-observed association between welfare and imprisonment.

Author

• Stefan Ivanov, University at Albany, SUNY